Hegar

Empathy is a trait that almost all individuals of many mammal species possess. Lethal intra-species violence is also a behaviour observed in many (all, i’d guess) of those same species.

Individuals, their peers, their social networks, their identities, institutions and the specific situation all influence behaviour. When those line up one way, we do a murder. A different configuration and we do a cuddle.

It makes no sense to suggest that humans are either inherently good or bad - those are artificial concepts that don’t even have a fixed meaning within a single human identity group. At the end of the day we’re just organisms exhibit behaviours to meet needs.

The catholic church would absolutely use sainthood to whitewash the legacy of a rapist, but i’m sure that position has plenty of promising internal candidates.

Ugh last time i helped my father dig a hole it was basically rocks held together with clay. Shovels are a joke, the only thing that works is a stick.

My favourite atm is that kirk’s wife had him killed.

In reality, an open elite controls world governments and economies.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Chuang_Tzŭ_(Giles)/Chapter_1

The text itself is a really easy and fun read. Even a couple thousand years later in translation, the inner chapters are hilarious, nonstop brilliance and plenty of the outer chapters are thought provoking. It got me through the pandemic.

Though it would go on to become foundational for Daoism, I’m skeptical that it was ever intended to be part of a larger tradition.

Have you read Neither Lord Nor Subject, by Bao Jingyen? It clearly and passionately makes an eco-anarchist critique of authority from a daoist angle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs23tDAaEho

Zhuangzi, the author of one of the top 5 texts of our species, talks a lot about 遊 yóu - a word that means roam, wander, stroll, walk, associate with. It’s sometimes translated as “free and easy wandering” and used in words like friend, play, sightsee, visit, amuse yourself, parade, dissociate.

For Zhuangzi, yóu is really important for happiness and to understand the world.

The clearest example of yóu I’ve experienced is the kind of judgement-free free-association of talking to other neurodivergent friends.

Humans are social mammals. In many important respects, it makes no sense to even think of us as individuals.

I suspect that in the past people with higher levels of social anxiety probably just spoke a little less than average, and noticably less on the much less frequent times they met strangers.

But i think it’s its probably very inaccurate to imagine anyone who we’d recognize as an “introvert” in the much more collectivist cultures that dominate history.

He’s not and he won’t. He no longer has the mental capacity for that kind of planning, he never displayed it before he went senile. Plus he’s a coward.

I guess we must’ve liked it.

Since we put a ring on it.

What if corn syrup was somehow both chalky and waxy? I bet people would pay us to put that in their mouths.

I always heard that UFO sightings dropped drastically once cell phones became widespread.

Yep, I do still think this too. Nothing going on at the moment makes me think maybe I’m wrong and the rest of the world is well designed, rational and just.

The only quibble I have is I don’t think it’s more about elite-dominated societies, of which capitalism is just the current incarnation.

Of course!

On a completely unrelated topic, have you noticed that people with authority have a hard time admitting that they’re completely wrong?

For the first ~thirty years of my life the explanation for “why didn’t you do the thing?” that made the most sense to me was that the thing must not be worth doing, so it was everyone else’s problem for wanting it done in the first place.

Many people in positions of authority over me disagreed with this interpretation.

arcadey shooting galleries we have instead.

Yes. It felt very state fair bb gun shooting gallery.

the mission where you get drunk.

That was excellent. I couldn’t stop myself telling my wife and several equally disinterested coworkers about it.

I blocked like that on reddit but here there’s fewer users so I have a higher block threshold.

Plus I want to give people credit for choosing to be on the fediverse - that earns almost everyone a “well maybe you just had a bad day”.

I’ve been playing RDR2 for the first time. The story is very good, very cinematic. The pace of gameplay is often quite slow, certainly for hunting. And the level of attention to detail enhances the feel of realism … And then you headshot like 20-50 people ambushing you using bullet time and chowing down on 5 tins of chewing tobacco mid fight.

Capitalism isn’t what’s crashing out the United States, it’s these fucking monopolies and mergers.

I’ve got bad news for you about which form of social organization promotes the growth of monopolies.

There have been a handful of examples of breaking up monopolies but even then the general trend was still increasing consolidation of money and power in fewer and fewer hands.

AT&T was a great example of a step back from the capitalist hellscape we’re being pushed into, but there were two steps forward before it and another two after it.